Thursday, July 17th, 2008

Time	Event
5:32a	QotD According to IMDB, it's been forty years ... "If I spoke prose you'd all find out / I don't know what I talk about." -- Jeremy Hillary Boob -- the Nowhere Man Lord Mayor: "Four scores and 32 bars ago, our four fathers" Young Fred: "A quartet?" Lord Mayor: "And four mothers" Young Fred: "A Mother quartet?" Lord Mayor: "Made their way in this yellow submarine..." Young Fred: "What, that little thing?" Lord Mayor: "...to Pepperland." "Nothing you can make that can't be made.  No one you can save that can't be saved.  Nothing you can do but you can learn how to be you in time.  It's easy.  All you need is love. [...]" ... since Yellow Submarine premiered. (Comment on this)
2:40p	Huh. Well that's a new one... An ambulance (the ... fifth? sixth? since I woke up) just wailed up Lombard St., and this time the cars in front of it, instead of ducking out of the way into the mostly empty parking lane -- as I would have done -- or driving normally as though they didn't realize what sirens and flashing lights mean -- as I've witnessed far too often here in B'more -- a row of four cars just came to a stop in the middle of the block in the traffic lane, forcing the ambulance to cross the double yellow line to get around them. (Comment on this)
7:51p	Hyperacusis and Helicopters I've been interested in photographing helicopters lately. Partly because helicopters are just kinda nifty, and partly because there are a bunch of 'em that frequently fly nearby. So I've been keeping an ear toward hearing them approach so I can go grab a long lens and lean out the window. When I'm experiencing fibromyalgia-related hyperacusis (auditory hyperacuity), I can hear them from too far away to be useful. Worse, I keep hearing sounds that resemble those made by helicopters, but aren't. I think that's from a certain pattern of truck traffic on I95. (Some nearer street vehicles also mimic helicopter sounds, but I can distinguish them more quickly because the direction the sound comes from changes in the wrong way. The sound that I think is coming from I95 has enough reflections -- the effect that makes 'ghosts' in analog television -- that it's hard to hear an exact direction in it. Reflections are a challenge regardless, but this seems to have extra bounces.) I'm still trying to learn to distinguish street-legal motorcycles, scooters, and illegal dirt bikes by sound at a distance. The scooters and the dirt bikes sound awfully similar. (Comment on this)

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